Mike, while the tutorial for setting up the navigation stack says that you
can just set the static_map: yaml setting to false if you don't have a map
server, I have found it easier to just setup a map server and give it a
small white image, basically just a blank map.

I would recommend following these tutorials:
Navigation <http://www.ros.org/wiki/navigation/Tutorials> (Including the tf
setup)
Map Server <http://www.ros.org/wiki/map_server> (While this isn't a
tutorial, you can use the example configurations)

Hope that helps,

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Woodall
Graduate Software Engineering
Auburn University
w@auburn.edu
wjwwood@gmail.com
256-345-9938
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Mike Purvis
<mpurvis@clearpathrobotics.com>wrote:

> I have a few questions about setting up the navigation stack. I have a very
> simple simulator node which broadcasts Odometry messages and consumes Twist
> messages. Using a GUI program, I've been able to monitor and verify the
> performance of this node.
>
> Assuming that for the purposes of getting started, I don't (yet) care about
> mapping or obstacle-avoidance, is this simulation enough to run the
> navigation stack?
>
> I've followed the tutorials as best I can, but of course I haven't got a
> map, so map_server fails to start, and then move_base gives this warning:
>
> [ WARN] 1275592139.432109000: Waiting on transform from base_link to /map
> to become available before running costmap, tf error: Frame id /base_link
> does not exist!
>
> This is expected, as I have not broadcasted any tf transforms. But my robot
> has no joints or geometric parts, so there's nothing to broadcast---as far
> as the simulator is concerned, it's just a box on wheels. Is there a way to
> make the base_link frame exist independent of using
> a tf::TransformBroadcaster to broadcast its relationship to another frame?
>
> Further to that, how do I address the larger map issue? Can I disable the
> mapping functionality somehow (for now), or should I just create a blank map
> and let it use that?
>
> Is my objective completely unreasonable, or is this just a matter of some
> configuration tweaks?
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions or guidance,
>
> Mike
>
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